Marketing Car Products & Auto Racing - 1906

People have said with wry smiles that the first auto race took place when the second car was produced. Funny. Yeah, there's some truth to it. There was Paris to Rouen in 1894 and the following year America got into the act with the snowy November Chicago Times-Herald's Chicago to Evanston go.
Less talked about but just as true is companies saw marketing and promotional opportunity in these competitive contests and jumped on it from the onset. Having the best car, tires, oil or spark plugs were valuable bragging rights because they translated into sales. There's no doubt that especially in these early days the automotive industry and its ecosystem worked to establish itself in the collective mind of consumers.

Conversely, these events were never more relevant to the individual's purchase decision. Understand that even by 1906 everyone alive had for most of their lives had relied on animals for personal transportation. Even the market innovators and early adopters who took the plunge into car ownership before the turn of the century still had used horses and/or horse-drawn conveyances for most of their lives by midway through the first decade of the new century. Cars simply had not been around that long as much more than experimental curiosities until 1901 or 1902. What's more the earliest commercial offerings were expensive and simply out of reach for the typical household.
As the product rode the lifecycle curve that anything that gains market acceptance does, prices inevitably fell. People looking to their first ownership looked at cars quizzically, probably not unlike many did with the earliest personal computers in 1980. The challenge was to get educated as quickly as possible.
Whether we admit it or not even today, with a far more discerning public, advertising makes a difference. Few probably purchase - especially big ticket items - based on what they glean from advertising alone. Still, we do listen to ads, especially when we are motivated to learn about a service or offering.
Witness an ad from Keystone Gasoline and Motor Oils (and curiously, I think, its Indianapolis-based refinery Tiona). They were bragging that all the competitors at the 1906 Decoration Day race meet used their product. Among those was the sport's biggest star Barney Oldfield. An ad featuring Barney's car-related choices had to be sure fire.